This brief essay is a working draft of an article in preparation for the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., examining the role of the monetary base in monetary economics and monetary policymaking. Comments are welcome.

Milton Friedman Luncheon, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Mo., July 31, 2007

Data on the monetary aggregates are the fundamental raw material for research in many facets of economics and finance. Money demand modeling, measurement of money stock announcement effects, tests of the rationality of preliminary money stock forecasts and financial market efficiency, and...

This paper offers a general equilibrium model that explains how the observed correlations of money and output fluctuations may come about through endogenously determined fluctuations in the money multiplier. The model is calibrated to meet long run features of the U.S. economy (including...

This paper includes revised and extended versions of tables of historical .S. currency and monetary aggregates data compiled for the forthcoming work: Susan B. Carter et.al., editors, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to the Present, Millennial Edition. Three volumes....

This paper investigates the impact of unanticipated changes in the money stock on the money, stock and foreign exchange markets. Nearly all the empirical work to date indicates that both interest rates and the foreign exchange value of the dollar rise and stock prices fall in response to an...

Milton Friedman Luncheon, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Mo., July 31, 2007

Since January 1994, the Federal Reserve Board has permitted depository institutions in the United States to implement so-called retail sweep programs. The essence of these programs is computer software that dynamically reclassifies customer deposits between transaction accounts, which are...